ially made his own, and for
further information on it his classic work should be consulted.

(1) Golden Bough, "The Dying God," p. 114. (See also S. Reinach,
Cults, Myths and Religion, p. 94) on the martyrdom of St. Dasius.

Andrew Lang also, with regard to the Aztecs, quotes largely from
Sahagun, and summarizes his conclusions in the following passage:
"The general theory of worship was the adoration of a deity, first by
innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a MAN for
the male gods, of a WOMAN for each goddess. (1) The latter victims were
regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in, each
case; for no system of worship carried farther the identification of the
god with the sacrifice (? victim), and of both with the officiating pri
connection was emphasized by the priests wearing the newly-flayed skins
of the victims--just as in Greece, Egypt and Assyria, the fawn-skin
or bull-hide or goat-skin or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the
celebrants. Finally, an image of the god was made out of paste, and this
was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who
communicated." (2)

(1) Compare the festival of Thargelia at Athens, originally
connected with the ripening of the crops. A procession was formed and
the first fruits of the year offered to Apollo, Artemis and the Horae.
It was an expiatory feast, to purify the State from all guilt and avert
the wrath of the god (the Sun). A man and a woman, as representing
the male and female population, were led about with a garland of figs
(fertility) round their necks, to the sound of flutes and singing. They
were then scourged, sacrificed, and their bodies burned by the seashore.
(Nettleship and Sandys.)

(2) A Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, p. 97.

Revolting as this whole picture is, it represents as we know a mere
thumbnail sketch of the awful practices of human sacrifice all over the
world. We hold up our hands in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli
dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to
remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to
describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of
Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did Augustine worship? The Being who
could condemn children to such a fate was certainly no better than the
Mexican Idol.

And yet Augustine was a great and noble man, with some by no means
unworthy